


Ready, Steady, Date!

by moonshoespotterr (nicolem_85)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Speed Dating, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 21:22:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6256375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicolem_85/pseuds/moonshoespotterr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry didn’t think that an evening spent speed dating could get much worse.  That was until he saw a familiar face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ready, Steady, Date!

**Author's Note:**

> This was my submission for Dralentine's Day 2016 gifted to potterslittledragon. Enjoy :)

As soon as Harry stepped into The Sleeping Dragon he knew he had made a grave mistake.  The owners had obviously gone to the extreme for Valentine’s Day, Harry thought as he eyed the bright pink streamers and bunches of mistletoe hanging from the ceiling.  Hell, there was even a giant teddy bear, complete with the most ridiculous bow tie he had ever seen, sitting by the bar.  Honestly, the place looked as if a unicorn had thrown up on it.

As if sensing her friend’s hesitance, Hermione turned to him beseechingly.  “Come on, Harry.  I know it’s a bit corny but it could be a great way to meet someone.”

Faced with her puppy dog eyes – a talent she’d perfected over the last few years – Harry sighed, resigned to spending an evening in this sickeningly sweet hell.  He supposed he at least owed her this.  After all, his friends had been his rock over the past few years: they had been there for him through his messy break up with Ginny, through his confusion about his sexuality and there to force him out of bed on days where he just wanted to bury beneath his duvet. 

“Yeah, mate.  It might not be too bad,” added Ron encouragingly, his cheerful tone slightly betrayed by the look of distaste he was currently giving to the confetti-strewn floor.  “I’ll just get us some drinks, shall I?”

Harry sent a last, pleading look at Ron’s back as it disappeared into the small crowd that surrounded the bar and put up little resistance when Hermione latched a small, but deceptively strong, hand around his forearm and unceremoniously led him to the registration desk.

“Hi, there!” smiled a peppy, young witch, her strawberry blonde fringe bobbing in her eyes as she spoke.  “Are you wanting to register for the speed dating event?”

It was a credit to his long years of friendship with Ron and Hermione that Harry resisted his urge to flee, instead nodding warily at the witch.

“Great!  If you’ll just fill this out for me then we can get you started,” she said, entirely too cheerful for Harry’s liking, and handed him a form onto which he hastily scribbled down his details.  “Wonderful.  Now here’s your number,” the witch pinned a heart-shaped badge to his shirt, identifying him as #17.  “When we’re ready to begin you just need to take a seat over there,” she pointed to the back of the room where there were ten tables set up, each with a chair at either side, “and I’ll explain how tonight is going to work.”

Harry looked at the setup with trepidation.  He understood the basics of speed dating, sure – you chat with someone for a few minutes, see if you hit it off and then move on to the next person – but this was wizard speed dating.  He gulped nervously, relieved when a familiar freckled face appeared next to him.

“Here you are, Harry,” Ron said handing him a deep red cocktail topped with a cherry.  “No idea what’s in it but I thought you could do with a bit of liquid courage.”

Harry gratefully accepted the drink and took a large swig, savouring the surprisingly pleasant flavour of liquorice and berries on his tongue as he looked around the room.  It was actually quite a good turn out.  When Hermione had first suggested coming along Harry had been worried that he’d be the only one there – out and proud wizards weren’t exactly easy to find after all – but the pub was getting busier by the minute.  His friends chatted on as Harry glanced surreptitiously at the other participants under the guise of drinking his cocktail.  Some of them didn’t look too bad, he supposed.  Maybe. 

A loud horn interrupted his examination of a rather plain looking wizard and he turned to find the registration witch standing on a chair. “Can all the participants of tonight’s event please take a seat at one of the tables behind me?  We’re ready to begin.”

Harry hesitated as twenty or so wizards from around the pub made their way to find a seat and, at Hermione’s shooing motion, took the last seat opposite a nervous looking brunet.

“Ok, looks like that’s everyone.  Welcome to wizard’s night here at The Sleeping Dragon. My name is Maddie and I’m running tonight’s event: speed dating!  So for everyone new to this I’ll explain what’s going to happen.  You have five minutes to talk to the person opposite you, at the end of which you will hear a horn signalling that your time is up.  You will then move one chair to your left and we start over again.  However,” she paused ominously and Harry gulped, sensing that things were about to get a whole lot worse, “this wouldn’t be wizard speed dating if there wasn’t a bit of excitement.  During the event a spell will be cast to determine the level of attraction between two people.  At the end of the night each participant will receive a card with the number of the person with whom they shared the most chemistry.  Doesn’t that sound fun?”

It most certainly did not, Harry thought.  What if no one was attracted to him?  What if the card he received at the end of the night was blank?  He had no time to brood on this though as Maddie raised her voice once more.

“Ok.  Ready, steady, DATE!”

Harry glanced around helplessly as he realised that now he actually had to try and make conversation with the wizard opposite him.

“Er, hi.”

The other wizard looked just as nervous as Harry.  “Hello.”

“I’ve, err, never done this before.  I’m not really sure how it goes,” Harry confessed.

The wizard looked relieved and smiled.  Not a bad smile either, Harry noticed.  “Me neither.  But I guess we should start with our names and what we do for a living?”

After the awkward introductions, he found it surprisingly easy to talk to the wizard.  Harry found out that his name was Jonathan and that he worked in the children’s ward at St Mungo’s as a Mediwizard.  He found out that Jonathan loved cats and the Holyhead Harpies but hated jazz and spiders.  In fact, he was just starting to think that he maybe could have been interested when a familiar posh drawl tore his gaze away and further down the room. 

It couldn’t be.  But the longer Harry stared the more he realised that there was no mistaking it.  Looking ridiculously out of place among the pink streamers and heart-shaped confetti, and currently sneering at the poor wizard unlucky enough to be placed opposite him, was Draco Malfoy. 

Harry hadn’t seen hair or tail of Malfoy since the trials after the war and if he stared now, well, he was only human after all.  The Slytherin barely resembled the pale, frightened boy he had last seen in the Ministry courtrooms; instead, the man sitting only a few seats away was, for lack of a better word, stunning.  The platinum hair that was once harshly slicked back now hung loose around sharp cheekbones and fell down to brush along the collar of an exquisite grey robe.  Harry would have bet his entire inheritance that it had been made to measure, his eyes clouding over as he imagined running fingers over the soft material and finding out first-hand just how well the blond’s robe fit. 

Unaware of how long he had been staring, Harry jumped when his companion cleared his throat.  He apologised guiltily but the damage had been done and Harry was almost relieved when a loud horn signalled that it was time to move seats. 

Right, pay attention this time, Harry chastised himself.  No more staring at Malfoy.  He slipped into the next seat along and managed to talk to the wizard opposite him for nearly a whole minute before a flash of blond hair in his peripheral completely shattered his concentration.  From then on the evening passed in a blur of names and faces, Harry’s focus solely trained on the man who was moving closer and closer with each blare of the horn.

Michael, accountant, where has Malfoy been all this time? – HORN! – David, obliviator, what on earth is he doing here? – HORN! – Robert, potioneer, oh no, he’s only two seats away now – HORN! – Edgar, crup trainer, shit, what do I do? – HORN!

Harry took a deep breath and nervously wiped his hands on his jeans as he moved one seat to his left.  Grey eyes widened in shock as he sat down, blasting Harry’s theory that Malfoy had been taunting him all evening out of the window.

“Potter,” Malfoy greeted, his face now schooled into one of mild amusement.  “What a surprise.  I must say that this is the last place I’d expect to see the Chosen One.”  
Harry scowled at the name.  “For your information, Malfoy, Hermione and Ron made me come here.”

“Ah, I can sympathise with you there.  Pansy and Blaise dragged me along,” Malfoy indicated to the bar where Harry could just discern the two Slytherins.  “I’m back home barely long enough to unpack and apparently it’s already time for me to “settle down”,” he said with a scoff. 

“Back home?” Harry asked. He had no idea Malfoy had even been away.

Malfoy nodded.  “I’ve been living in France with mother.  Britain wasn’t exactly welcoming to us after the war so moving away seemed like the best option.”

Ah. Harry could understand that.  After the mistakes made during the war, the Ministry of Magic had gone to the other extreme, charging people as Death Eaters right, left and centre.  “So why come back?”

“Simple, Potter.  I missed it here.  There’s only so much of sipping tea and eating cake with your mother that a man can take.  Besides,” Malfoy smirked, “I’ve been out of the loop for too long.  Difficult to get hold of the Prophet in France, you know.  Makes you miss all sorts of important gossip.  For example, oh, I don’t know, why the once most eligible bachelor in Britain is taking part in wizards-only speed dating, hm?”

An insult ready on his tongue, Harry paused and realised that the malicious sneer he remembered so well was missing from Malfoy’s face. He’s joking with me.  Draco Malfoy is joking with me.  Harry settled for blushing bright red.

“Oh, don’t be embarrassed, Potter.  I fully approve.  In fact,” he leaned forward suggestively, “if I had known in school that you were so inclined I might have put my efforts into teasing you in a entirely different way.”

The image of a shocked Great Hall as their fisticuffs turned to something else flashed through his head and Harry couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him.  “Ron would’ve had a heart attack.  It’d almost serve him right, the amount of awful dates he’s set me up on.  One guy actually asked for a lock of my hair,” he grimaced.

“That’s nothing.  Thanks to my mother, I once had to endure an entire evening with a date who ate nothing but raw squid,” Malfoy raised.  “Put me off the stuff for life.”

As they compared dates from hell, Harry realised that they were actually having a civil conversation.  More than civil, even.  In fact, Harry found that he was enjoying Malfoy’s company so much that when the horn sounded to signify that five minutes was up he jumped an inch off his seat, banging his knee painfully against the table leg in the process.  
“Um, I guess we need to change seats,” Harry muttered.  He knew that he was dangerously close to pouting but right now moving tables was at the bottom of his to-do list, just above getting his balls waxed and inviting Umbridge out for afternoon tea.

He started as warm fingers brushed his chin.  “Cheer up, Potter.  Buy you a drink when this is over?”

Not trusting his voice to come out as anything but a high-pitched squeak, Harry nodded.

“Good,” Malfoy smiled.  “I’ll meet you at the bar.”

The remaining dates sped past but Harry hardly noticed.  His feet jittered uncontrollably beneath his seat resulting in more than a few odd looks and, before he knew it, the sound of the horn echoed through the room accompanied by a shout.

“And that’s it, gents!  That’s the end of our speed dating night.  I do hope you’ve enjoyed yourself and, who knows, maybe even met someone who’s caught your fancy,” Maddie winked and Harry felt the tips of his ears blush as he resolutely stared ahead, determined not to turn around and look at a certain blond.  “But please don’t hurry off.  Your shared chemistry results will be with you shortly so stick around, have a drink and thank you for coming!”

As the tables cleared, Harry peered around for Ron and Hermione. Pushing past a very drunk man wearing heart-patterned briefs on his head, he spotted a flash of red hair and eventually found his friends snuggled up in a corner booth and surrounded by a large number of empty cocktail glasses.

“’Arry!” Ron exclaimed, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and dragging him down.  “Didya have fun?”

“Not as much as you two, apparently,” Harry rolled his eyes.

“Did you talk to anyone nice?” Hermione asked with a waggle of her eyebrows and a small hiccough.

“Erm, kinda,” he replied hesitantly.  He wasn’t sure how his friends would react when they found out who the person was that had caught his attention.

Hermione’s face lit up and Harry could sense an interrogation coming on when a red envelope bumped into his nose.  Shit.  The shared chemistry results.  He braced himself for disappointment as his shaking hands peeled back the paper to reveal a single number:

#5

Harry panicked as he frantically tried to recall who that had been.  Wait, hadn’t Malfoy been #5?  Or was that #6?  Harry stared down at his card, a horrible feeling that he’d been matched with the wizard who had talked about his kneazle for five minutes straight sinking like a ball of lead into his stomach.  

Just as the panic was beginning to set in, a warm hand settled on his shoulder.

“Well, it seems that I definitely need to buy you a drink now.”

Harry turned to find Malfoy smiling down at him, and had he always been so tall?  In his hand he held a card identical to the one that Harry had been clutching anxiously only seconds before, the only difference was the number.  Printed on Malfoy’s card, in the same delicate black script, was #17.  

A breath of relief left Harry and, seizing every ounce of Gryffindor courage he possessed, replied.  “Only if I can buy you one after.”

He was rewarded with a deep chuckle as the hand on his shoulder moved down to rest lightly on his lower back.  “Seems fair enough,” Malfoy agreed.

Ron watched the exchange with confusion and gaped in shock as his best friend vanished into the crowd with the Slytherin.  “Hermione,” he croaked, “please tell me that Harry didn’t just go off with Draco Malfoy.”

Hermione, however, was not the least bit shocked.  It would have taken someone with the emotional range of a teaspoon to miss the sexual tension between those two.  “Oh, Ron,” she sighed, taking in her boyfriend’s puzzled and slightly alcohol addled expression.  “Let’s go home.  I’ll explain in the morning.”

 

One month later

Harry woke up not fully knowing where he was.  Normally a situation like this would have launched him into fight or flight panic mode but something told him that he was safe.  He was warm, still slightly drowsy and there was a comforting pressure against his back.  Suddenly, the pressure shifted and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like his name.  Harry smiled.  Draco.  The night before came rushing back to him as he snuggled into his boyfriend’s embrace.

Harry had been shaking with nerves as he closed the door behind them.  It wasn’t the first time Draco had been to Twelve Grimmauld Place but there was something about that night, the way the air crackled between them like the calm before a storm, full of tension and expectation that had put Harry on edge.  He could tell that Draco felt it too; the way the blond had lingered in the hallway almost shyly, uncharacteristically waiting for Harry to make the first move.  This was new for both of them.

He knew that Draco had never had a proper relationship before, not that Harry was one to talk.  That was why they had decided to take things slowly.  After all, despite years of hatred and obsession, they barely even knew each other.  So far things had been sweet, innocent: hand holding in Diagon Alley, light touches over dinner and goodnight kisses under streetlamps, but the looks they had been sending each other all evening had been nothing like sweet or innocent.  It was the heated glance Draco had given Harry as the he licked the last bit of chocolate mousse from his dessertspoon that had been it.  The straw that broke the camel’s back.  Harry had cracked and asked Draco back to his before he could think about what he was doing.

That memory had made Harry surge forward until he was standing in front of Draco, looking up into grey eyes he had never imagined could contain such warmth, and lean in to capture soft lips in a kiss.  It started off as normal, just mouths moving gently together, until Draco opened his lips with a groan.  It was like the floodgates had been opened: a month of caution thrown to the wind in a rush of hands tangling in hair and impatient teeth nipping at lips.  Harry had gasped as their hips aligned, a hard length pressing into his own and making him see stars. 

He flushed as images of what had come next filled his head: images of kissing along pale skin, of grey eyes that scrunched shut in pleasure and of pink lips that parted to shout “Harry!” as Draco fell over the edge.

Harry sighed as a warm arm wrapped around him and a mouth pressed to the back of his neck in a kiss.  “Morning,” mumbled a sleepy Draco.  A hand trailed lazily across Harry’s stomach and paused when it brushed his boxer shorts that, thanks to his morning’s reminiscence, were tented in arousal.  “My my,” Draco teased, suddenly sounding much more awake, “what have we here?”

Breath catching in his chest, Harry rolled over onto his back. And as he looked up at the smirking face that had become so dear to him he decided that maybe speed dating wasn’t so bad after all.

\---- END ----

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are love!


End file.
